


Harry Potter and the Rings of Power

by Starrik



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biracial Harry Potter, Canon Rewrite, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Harry has a snake, Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Time Skips, who needs horcruxes when you have a magic ring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 11:57:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14894222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrik/pseuds/Starrik
Summary: Harry Potter attends Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with a scar on his forehead, a snake wrapped around his wrist and a mysterious ring hidden in the bottom of his trunk. He has a whole new world to explore, and some questions that he wants answers to.





	Harry Potter and the Rings of Power

**Author's Note:**

> Harry receives a letter that reminds him of one he's seen before, and he gets his first taste of a brand new world.

In a cupboard under the stairs there lived a wizard. Not a big, open cupboard, filled with shoes and jackets and winter coats, nor yet a cozy, empty space with soft blankets and pillows to sleep on: it was a Harry-hole, and that meant spiders.

This wizard was only nearly eleven years old, and already he was growing far too big to fit in the tiny little space that was left underneath the stairs, where every other house in the neighbourhood left the things that they didn’t want out in the open. Harry supposed that his Aunt and Uncle used theirs for the very same thing.

He was a gangly child, only just thin enough that the neighbours would quietly mutter to each other about whether or not the Dursleys were feeding him enough. His hair stuck out at odd angles, a wild brush of black that only ever just managed to hide the odd, lightning bolt scar on his forehead. He wore a pair of glasses that were too small for his head, and the way he squinted made it clear to everyone that the prescription was well out of date.

Harry emerged from the cupboard one summer morning, elbows and knees emerging long before the rest of him, and stared for a moment at the calendar that hung on the wall nearby. The days until he would start at Stonewall High kept growing fewer and fewer and not even his rapidly approaching birthday could cheer Harry up from that grey future. He walked out the front door to collect the mail, as was his first chore of any day, and wondered why his Uncle hadn’t fixed the mail slot yet. When he looked up from the small pile of letters, he was met by the unblinking eyes of a barn owl, that hooted softly at him.

“Can I help you?” Harry asked helpfully. He wasn’t sure why he expected the owl to respond, but he could have sworn that it shook its head at him before it took off into the morning air. “Weird,” he said to himself, but weird things happened to Harry all the time. Like the way his hair would grow back the day after it was cut, or his habit of blacking out when he was bullied and appearing somewhere safe, moments later.

The letters in his hands were mostly boring, bills and junk mail like it always was, until he reached the heavy final letter addressed to him. Harry’s heart jumped into his throat as he recognised the envelope. He’d only ever seen one other like it, big and yellowed and written on in flowery letters. The other was hidden in a secret compartment in his uncle’s desk, which had surprised a young Harry, because the only kind of secret you expected a man like Vernon Dursley to have was mild tax fraud. He’d carefully slipped it open, and onto his palm had dropped a small, golden ring that fit his finger perfectly. The letter had talked about Harry’s mum, and dad, and he’d had to shove the letter back in the secret compartment before he finished it because the Dursleys got home, but he’d kept the ring. If it had belonged to his mum and dad, that made it his now, right?

It was the only thing he had to remember them by.

Harry had never mentioned the letter, or the ring, to anyone, and he hadn’t had a chance like that to snoop around. Especially not when his uncle asked if someone had taken something from his office, before barring his window and getting a serious lock for the office door. He’d never quite forgotten about it, either, Harry had heard his uncle muttering about the ring when he thought no one was listening once or twice since then.

The front door swung shut slowly behind Harry, even from outside, the sounds of muffled shouting were soon obvious.

 

* * *

 

 

“So, Hagrid, why does it say that students are allowed to have an owl, a cat, or a toad?” Harry asked, almost running to keep up with the huge man’s strides.

“Ah, tha’d be ol’ McGonagall, keepin’ with traditions. Used to be, ye could only have one of those three at Hogwarts. As a familiar, like the ol’ days. Now ye can have almost any pet, ‘long as it’s no bigger than a cat. There was one year, one of them Weasley twins got themselves a Great Dane an’ tried to convince McGonagall to let him bring it. Didn’t take, o’ course, but ye have to give it to ‘im for trying. No, Harry, we’ll stop by the Magical Menagerie after ye get yer robes an’ get ye a familiar.” Harry thought this all sounded very reasonable, trying to take care of a Great Dane in the middle of a magical school would be almost impossible. He wondered if every student was entitled to a familiar, or if Hagrid was actually just not telling Harry that he was going to be paying for it himself. He hadn’t known the groundskeeper for very long, but already he had been the kindest person Harry had ever met. “D’you mind if I wait outside Madam Malkin’s, Harry? There’s plenty of delicate stuff in there, and I don’t right like the looks she gives me if I make a mess.”

“No that’s alright,” Harry said, flashing Hagrid a friendly smile. “It shouldn’t take long, right?”

“They’re quick about it in there. She’s a dab hand with a wand, that woman, and nobody knows robes like she does.”

Harry waved to Hagrid as he stepped into the shop, which turned out to be yet another marvel in a street full of impossible things. He could see scissors cutting through bolts of cloth on one side of the room, with no hands moving them, and a measuring tape sizing up another boy about the same age as him. On its own. A middle-aged witch was fussing around, instructing a quill to take down some notes as she went before she noticed Harry. With a snap of her fingers, another tape started to measure Harry, and she nodded firmly at him before disappearing into a back room.

“So, you’ll be starting at Hogwarts this year too,” said the blonde boy.

“Er, yeah, I am.” He wondered if he should introduce himself, but the boy didn’t seem to be interested in such trivial things as names. It was almost as if he thought that Harry already knew who he was – and if he didn’t, that he should.

“Do you know what House you’re going to be in then? I’m going to be in Slytherin, just like my father was. I can’t imagine being in one of the others, I hear they let Muggleborns in, like they’re real wizards. Do you think you’ll be in Slytherin as well?” Harry, who didn’t know what a Slytherin was, decided then that he didn’t want to be one. He got the feeling that Muggleborn was a nice way of saying something much nastier, but that the boy wasn’t sure if he could get away with what he actually wanted to say.

Harry had been told to ‘go back where he came from’ enough times by his classmates, and especially his cousin, that he knew he didn’t want anything to do with this boy. He had nearly thought of an appropriately biting reply when a tall blonde man, strikingly similar to his son, glided into the shop, and handed over quite a lot of glittering gold coins to Madam Malkin.

“Come now Draco, you must be more careful what you say in public. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone, would we?” The man’s voice sounded like a sneer, even though his face was completely neutral. Harry started to wonder if he knew he was doing it, when he spotted the ring on the man’s index finger, curled around the head of a cane. It held a red ruby in the centre of it, and once he started looking at it Harry wasn’t capable of looking away. The man, Draco’s father, gave him a sharp look before ushering his son from the shop and back into the street. The ring slowly started to fade from Harry’s mind as he responded to the idle patter of Madam Malkin as she finished measuring him for his robes.

“Who were they?” he asked as she descended the small step-ladder that had placed itself besides him.

“Lucius Malfoy, and his son Draco,” she replied, schooling her features to not betray any opinion of the pair. “An old, important family. Very wealthy, and very powerful. You don’t want to mess with them, dear, much better to keep out of their way.”

Once he’d finished in the shop, Hagrid lead Harry much deeper into Diagon Alley than they had been so far. The half-giant had to tear the overwhelmed young boy away from the window outside Quality Quidditch Supplies, as he felt himself drawn to the sleek broomstick on  display, even as he could only guess what it was for, or what Quidditch might be.

The Menagerie did not hide all of its wonders on the inside. Even as they approached, Harry could see snails with glowing slime trails, crabs that seemed to have fire glowing at their rear, electric-blue fairy-like creatures in cages and a glass enclosure full of tiny spinning things that moved too fast to see properly. For once, though, Harry was not the only one overwhelmed by the contents of a store. Hagrid jogged up to the front entrance and started cooing over the snails. Harry tried to ask him what he was allowed to pick, but Hagrid was lost in the wonder of all the dangerous and deadly creatures on offer.

Left to his own devices again, Harry wandered up and down the aisles of the store, investigating a dozen different creatures that weren’t in any encyclopedia he’d ever read. How wizards managed to keep this all hidden was completely beyond him, but he suspected the answer if he asked might just be ‘magic’.

More mundane creatures seemed to be kept further towards the back of the store, and completely separate from the magical ones. Harry had already decided that he didn’t want a magical creature as a familiar, he wouldn’t know how to take care of one and it might be a bit much to try and learn before he went off to school. He was also completely certain that the Dursleys wouldn’t let him keep one. Dudley was allergic to cats, so that wasn’t going to happen even if it was hilarious, and Hagrid had told him that the school didn’t like dogs. He briefly considered getting a fish, just because it would be easy to take care of, when he spotted a small terrarium with a garter snake lounging beneath a heat lamp.

A snake wouldn’t be too hard to care for, he reasoned, his nose nearly touching the glass, and it wouldn’t be noisy so the Dursleys probably wouldn’t care as long as he found a way to get it bugs to eat. Though there was that one time in the zoo… but he hoped that Dudley had forgotten all about that by now. Harry was about to go and find Hagrid when the snake looked up from its rock and stared at him.

“Sstop sstaring at me,” it hissed, looking annoyed.

“Sorry,” Harry replied, “I didn’t mean to.”

“That’ss okay. It happenss all the time. I’ve never sspoken to ssomeone like you before?”

“Oh,” he said, feeling kind of foolish. “Not all wizards can talk to snakes?”

“No. None that I have ever met, though none have ever tried.”

“That’s weird. Um. I was wondering, would you like to come and live with me? My family aren’t very nice, but I promise I’ll keep you well fed and not let anyone hurt you.”

The snake seemed to consider it for a long while, before finally nodding.

“Yess, that sounds nice. Thiss place is quite boring. My name iss Glamdring.”

“Nice to meet you Glamdring. I’m Harry.”

 

While Hagrid had seemed quite bemused that Harry had chosen a tiny snake over all of the varied and excited creatures on offer, he’d been more than happy to pay for Glamdring and to help Harry buy all of the bugs that he would need to keep the snake. Even better, he’d bought Harry a magical terrarium, that was much larger inside than out, and whose heat lamp would automatically go on at the right time of day, and a bug-contained that self-froze. They added the snake supplies to the huge pile of school things that would have to fit in the trunk Harry had bought, and eventually made their way out of Diagon Alley and back into ordinary London. Harry had decided not to tell Hagrid about his ability to talk to snakes. If that was something that made him weird even among wizards, it was probably best to keep it between him and Glamdring.

“Now, ye’ve got yer ticket and yer trunk. September first, eleven o’clock sharp the train leaves. Platform Nine and Three Quarters, don’t forget!”

“But Hagrid,” Harry said, looking at the ticket, “there is no platform nine and three quarters.”

The huge groundskeeper of a magical school was nowhere to be seen.


End file.
